Stellaris 3.99.5 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Newbee53]

Notice the prompt to select empire focus! this is a really good idea. to bad it doesn't actually work. You should be able to choose your first focus free, as implied by this prompt.

Also, you shouldn't have civilians listed as unemployment. Unemployment is bad. Civilians are good. We don't want to confuse these things for people who aren't reading all the dev diaries.

Side Note: The reworking of the background image is very nice. Good job there. Now we just need to clean up the unemployment numbers.

I can also confirm that the UNE starts in a food deficit of -6. If that's not intentional, it might be worth tweaking some numbers to make that not a thing, though in the long run it is manageable and not run-breaking.

If you check the image above my prosperous union slave guilds barbaric despoilers have a -5 food deficit. Its pretty tiny, so I don't think its a problem. But I do wonder if its intended.

I took this image because when the game is running, I can see the slavery icon flickering in and out on those last three clerk pop groups. I have to wonder if pops are going in and out of slavery--slavery guilds civic--or if its just a graphical error. I've not noticed the bouncing up and down of resources you'd expect from pops entering and leaving slavery.

It's just the UI that bothers me. Numbers being two characters longer for no reason has that "nails on a chalkboard" feel to me, personally. Especially when it lacks thousands separators so you see 1000/1000 jobs, the numbers blend together more than 1,000/1,000, 1k/1k or better yet, the old version: 10/10

if you have fractional pop growth than 1.234 and 1234 are the same length, so there is no real benefit to going to smaller numbers. 1.2k/1.2k and 12/12 are nearly identical functionally, and if you see more precise numbers in the tool tip--1,234/1,234 and 12.34/12.34--you get the same lengths again. So it comes down to what makes the most sense. And at least for me--and apparently enough of the developers--1.2k makes more sense than 12.34 when talking about pops. and for me, the difference is enough that I'd favor the larger whole numbers.

There, removed the subjective part and expanded my non-subjective part. Minus the 'it makes more sense' issue. however, it appears the arguments around the pop numbers have gotten under my skin. so, I'm going to try and stay out of it for a bit.

 

[Ranuth]

Would it be reasonable to make Farming Zones the relevant zone for bio-reactors? While it gives you energy, it modifies farmers, so that seems to make more sense to me.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

I can also confirm that the UNE starts in a food deficit of -6. If that's not intentional, it might be worth tweaking some numbers to make that not a thing, though in the long run it is manageable and not run-breaking.

I'm pretty sure this is caused by reducing the numbers of jobs from zones from 180 to 100. The change was aimed at city districts, but rural districts use the same variable and lost nearly half their jobs so you're starting with a lot fewer farmers (and technicians/miners).

I think it'd make sense to keep rural districts as twice as many jobs per zone, so their jobs per district efficiency keeps up better with cities.

Or maybe rural districts could have two zones - that'd make them more flexible as we get more alternative zone options from planet features & civics, and would also allow space to change some buildings into zones.

• Special zones unlocked by planetary features/modifiers
  • Betherian Fields zones
  • Strategic resource mining zones
  • Scrap mining zones on relic worlds
  • Hunting (rather than farming) food zones on planets with suitable wildlife, producing less food in exchange for some amenities
  • Physics zones for generator district with magnetic fields, Engineering zones for mining district with unstable tectonics, Society zone for farming districts with dangerous wildlife
• Mini suburban zones for all basic districts that give other worker jobs or planet modifiers
  • Trade (e.g. Gemstone Mining, Cash Crop Farming, Supply Depot) zones, swapping some jobs to clerks
  • Military Base zones, swapping some jobs to soldiers
  • Maintenance zones for gestalts, swapping some jobs to maintenance drones
  • Housing zones that just give extra housing in exchange for jobs
• The base bio-reactor building could become a bio-reactor zone for generator and agricultural districts, adding a job with food upkeep and increased energy output instead of modifying farmer jobs - this would make it work for machines & lithoids looking to burn their food income from subjects and starbase hydroponics again!
• Certain civics could get other urban zones in their basic resource districts. This will cause your planets to look different with more of the thematically associated districts, and reward you with a little more granular job control for doing so. e.g.
  • Mining Guilds: unity or trader zones for mining districts
  • Agrarian Idyll: Amenities or maybe unity zones for farming districts
  • Anglers: Artisan (Pearl Diver) zone for farming districts
  • Police State: Enforcer zone for all basic districts
  • etc.
• You could have an AP that then unlocks all urban zones for all basic resource districts, for players that want more control of job balance or without enough planets to specialize for everything. Perhaps combined with hybrid colony designation that boost multiple resources.

 

[The Founder]

Okay, the stratum assignment/split bugs seems to be getting worse now?
I did a proper analysis and a solid half of the pop groups are working two different stratums, and "No Category" is still a thing:

Stellaris - 3.99.5 - Pop Group Stratums are FUBAR

Description 3.99.5 - Pop Group Stratums are FUBAR Game Version c228 What version do you use? Steam What expansions do you have installed? Plantoids, Humanoids, Synthetic Dawn, Utopia, Leviathans Story Pack, Apocalypse, Megacorp Do...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

This should be one of the simpler things to get right. One of the first thing to be fixed. Invalid popgroups are bound to cause followup bugs.

 

[Anry de Kornelle]

I launched the game through space farmers, and the first question that came to my mind was why the space farmers building can't be built in the farming zone?

besides the fact that the colonization of planets still works very strangely, I encountered the fact that there is no army on enemy planets, but all of it hangs in orbit, and I also cannot land my troops to storm the planet. After landing, they immediately return to orbit and the planet is not captured

I was very pleased that now some buildings can be built several times on the planet, which helps repair the economy

for some reason, bots have practically no fleets, I started a war in 80, attacked a bot with my two fleets of 2.5k power, and he was able to put up one fleet of 0.5 power. the next bot, ten years later, put up about the same army against me

 

[HFY]

I'm pretty sure this is caused by reducing the numbers of jobs from zones from 180 to 100. The change was aimed at city districts, but rural districts use the same variable and lost nearly half their jobs so you're starting with a lot fewer farmers (and technicians/miners).

I think it'd make sense to keep rural districts as twice as many jobs per zone, so their jobs per district efficiency keeps up better with cities.

Bottom-row Districts providing 2x the jobs of Zones or Buildings might help with the Habitat Hydroponics food dominance issue, and could help Habitat Research Districts to remain relevant.

I like that solution.

 

[Rasoka]

I found a bug that if you build three laboratories at the same time, you will have three laboratories at the same time

 

[NorseGod]

I don't understand why people think 1.234 pops would be better on the eyes than 1234 pops or even 1.2k. I talk about large populations as 1.2k all the time. But that 1.234 pops just feels like the nails on chalkboard sound. This is obviously very subjective however.

Hard disagree. 1.2k is easy easier to parse at a glance compared to 1234, especially when you can have three such results jammed right next to each other in the UI.

I would much rather it be 1.2 myself, but they decided to break the 1 pop 1 food system, so here we are.

 

[Newbee53]

well yeah, but I was talking more about the issues with 1.234 pops than comparing 1234 and 1.2k. when only comparing 1.2k and 1234 the first is clearly better.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

if you have fractional pop growth than 1.234 and 1234 are the same length, so there is no real benefit to going to smaller numbers. 1.2k/1.2k and 12/12 are nearly identical functionally, and if you see more precise numbers in the tool tip--1,234/1,234 and 12.34/12.34--you get the same lengths again. So it comes down to what makes the most sense. And at least for me--and apparently enough of the developers--1.2k makes more sense than 12.34 when talking about pops. and for me, the difference is enough that I'd favor the larger whole numbers.

There, removed the subjective part and expanded my non-subjective part. Minus the 'it makes more sense' issue. however, it appears the arguments around the pop numbers have gotten under my skin. so, I'm going to try and stay out of it for a bit.

I don't think you understand me.
Adding fractional numbers for less than 100 pops is mostly useless information for me, and having to show those extra significant figures makes the UI harder to read.

I prefer seeing 99 jobs become 100 jobs to seeing 990 jobs become 1k jobs.
I prefer 1 pop using 1 food to 1 pop using 0.01 food
(I don't care about 0.01 food upkeep or job workforce output)

In 3.14 numbers are consistent and managable.
In 3.99.5 numbers are inconsistent, unmanageable and buggy. Numbers getting bigger now look smaller, lose precision, become "..." or overlap.
(bugs will be fixed, I'll get used to managing needlessly larger numbers but the inconsistency will remain)

 

[The Founder]

I'm pretty sure this is caused by reducing the numbers of jobs from zones from 180 to 100. The change was aimed at city districts, but rural districts use the same variable and lost nearly half their jobs so you're starting with a lot fewer farmers (and technicians/miners).

I just checked: Over half my Starting Population is now Civilians.

4800 pops
2800 Civlians

No wonder we ahve a food deficit of half the population isn't working!

 

[Newbee53]

No wonder we ahve a food deficit of half the population isn't working!

They are working, they are producing trade. which can be turned into food if you want. I know this is mostly a joke, but this is why civilians need to be moved out of the unemployment category.

 

[workbot]

Gave this build a quick run this morning...

And wow, syncretic evolution is so much better now. Since the pop growth doesn't conflict, there's no more issues with specialist starvation. Putting your serviles directly into livestock works, because then your primary citizens fill out the jobs they were working before. Then, your food production naturally grows without needing to construct any agricultural districts (I imagine this will also work with lithoid livestock, if you're not doing a space fauna run like I was). I combined it with anglers at first, and realized that anglers is unnecessary.

Only downside right now is alien zoos are busted (livestock don't move to conserved fauna jobs) and livestock also don't get farmer bonuses (womp womp).

Definitely looking forward to playing like this in 4.0

 

[Imp0815]

Oh god — I finally understand the design intent behind zones.

@Eladrin
Can you confirm or deny this, please?

I took a long, hard look at this, and it finally clicked what the hell is going on with the zones.

What I understood is: we do not want to manage an Empire anymore — we are managing isolated planets!

What does this mean:
Zones are there to set up the fundamentals for a self-sustaining output planet. We don’t have dedicated planets anymore for a single type of resource, but we should look at the final important output at the end of the production chain — e.g., Alloys, Research, Unity, some Strategic Resources. Stuff we want to use on an Empire level.

Then we choose an Urban district, set up the end-producer and the intermediates, and then we check the basics.
We set it up so when we upgrade a city district, we should now produce job slots that provide all necessary jobs to fulfill the end product — like Research needing Consumer Goods, and CGs needing Minerals.
So we build mining zones paired with the city district and the industrial zones, and we can just ignore the job sliders as the system should adjust the production locally until all researcher jobs are filled.

If we do not produce the stuff locally, we must build trade to import the needed goods from other planets — basically building a trade district in the city zone to offset trade deficits.

This whole system is streamlining the entire end-product chain. We should not be moving between different resource planets to adjust outputs to be handled globally in our resource overview — instead, planets should first handle their resources locally, and in edge cases import them from elsewhere, which then requires trade — and in the worst case, even imported trade. And anything overproduced on the side is a neat little side efffect.

I get it now. But I don’t know if I like it or not.

It still somewhat limits planet interactions to just upgrading districts after the setup. And the setup just boils down to doing a checklist of the production chain to make sure everything is covered when pressing upgrade on the city district.

 

[Newbee53]

Oh god — I finally understand the design intent behind zones.

@Eladrin
Can you confirm or deny this, please?

I took a long, hard look at this, and it finally clicked what the hell is going on with the zones.

View attachment 1272992
What I understood is: we do not want to manage an Empire anymore — we are managing isolated planets!

What does this mean:
Zones are there to set up the fundamentals for a self-sustaining output planet. We don’t have dedicated planets anymore for a single type of resource, but we should look at the final important output at the end of the production chain — e.g., Alloys, Research, Unity, some Strategic Resources. Stuff we want to use on an Empire level.

Then we choose an Urban district, set up the end-producer and the intermediates, and then we check the basics.
We set it up so when we upgrade a city district, we should now produce job slots that provide all necessary jobs to fulfill the end product — like Research needing Consumer Goods, and CGs needing Minerals.
So we build mining zones paired with the city district and the industrial zones, and we can just ignore the job sliders as the system should adjust the production locally until all researcher jobs are filled.

If we do not produce the stuff locally, we must build trade to import the needed goods from other planets — basically building a trade district in the city zone to offset trade deficits.

This whole system is streamlining the entire end-product chain. We should not be moving between different resource planets to adjust outputs to be handled globally in our resource overview — instead, planets should first handle their resources locally, and in edge cases import them from elsewhere, which then requires trade — and in the worst case, even imported trade. And anything overproduced on the side is a neat little side efffect.

I get it now. But I don’t know if I like it or not.

It still somewhat limits planet interactions to just upgrading districts after the setup. And the setup just boils down to doing a checklist of the production chain to make sure everything is covered when pressing upgrade on the city district.

Assuming the logistics trade penalty is perfectly adjusted. I think they want this to be a viable method of playing, but not necessarily the only way to play. I also imagine they want an empire of generalized planets like this to be viable at a causal but still difficult level of the game. Like, you aren't trying to be a max strength crisis, but you are wanting to be competitive to a degree. I've heard that the trade deficit might be overturned and I am hoping to get a better look at it over the weekend.

 

[Eladrin]

What I understood is: we do not want to manage an Empire anymore — we are managing isolated planets!

What does this mean:
Zones are there to set up the fundamentals for a self-sustaining output planet. We don’t have dedicated planets anymore for a single type of resource, but we should look at the final important output at the end of the production chain — e.g., Alloys, Research, Unity, some Strategic Resources. Stuff we want to use on an Empire level.

I actually have no idea how you came to this conclusion, and would appreciate more explanation.

One of my biggest concerns is actually that Zones currently very heavily encourage and reward the hyper-specialization of planets. (With a small amount of trade upkeep being the primary downside, but a single specialized Trade planet should cover all of those costs.)

 

[The Founder]

They are working, they are producing trade. which can be turned into food if you want. I know this is mostly a joke, but this is why civilians need to be moved out of the unemployment category.

That just isn't enough to pay for the reduced income we got from halving all the jobs.

 

[DeusMalefor]

Will ME and HM planets be different than Normal empire planets ? I feel that they need to be a bit more unique...

 

[NorseGod]

I actually have no idea how you came to this conclusion, and would appreciate more explanation.

One of my biggest concerns is actually that Zones currently very heavily encourage and reward the hyper-specialization of planets. (With a small amount of trade upkeep being the primary downside, but a single specialized Trade planet should cover all of those costs.)

I think part of this is coming from people who are only playing with a few colonies for testing. I've played some runs with 5x the Habitable Worlds to get to 30+ Planet Empires, and Hyper-Specialized planets have been more efficient, especially where Buildings increase Job output. If you're going to spend minerals and upkeep on an Alloy Forge, it's cheaper to do it once on a planet with 2 Foundry Zones and fill the planet with City Zones, rather than making multiple copies of that same building.

Now that Amenities are being changed and a third Zone will add more jobs, that could be even more true. But that depends exactly on how buildings changed. I'll do another big Empire run this weekend, see what the difference is between hyper specialized and generic build planets at scale.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Is ground combat still borked? I'd like to know if I still need to disable pre-FTLs so that AI doesn't get stuck trying to invade them before I start a new game.